Google (News – Alert) advertising constantly approaches work to be “targeted” and relevant, as opposed to delivering poorly-decisioned noise, especially on mobile screens. The Internet giant has now added new tools to its DoubleClick (News – Alert) ad network platform, targeted to helping advertisers build better multiscreen ads more quickly, using HTML5 and in-ad creative tools.

“Without ad creative that is engaging and relevant to people, a campaign will fall short of its advertising goals,” explained Becky Chappell, product marketing manager for DoubleClick Creative Solutions. “Further, with consumers spending much of their time on smartphones and tablets, these engaging and relevant experiences need to work across screens.”

The portfolio additions include creative management tools to support large-scale campaigns, dynamic creative tools support programmatic media buys, HTML5 and in-app creative tools support mobile ad targeting, and in-stream video tools support video ad targeting.

Overall, creating successful cross-screen advertising means building specific, mobile-compatible creative. This has presented advertisers with a conundrum: it costs more in development to tweak campaigns for different sized screens and for the different ways that consumers interact with those screens. Yet repurposed PC ads are often obtrusive and offer a negative experience when incorporated into, say, a smartphone environment.

Chappell noted that the best way to build those ads is in HTML5, which allows you to provide the same interactive experiences for mobile as you do on desktop. Unfortunately, it’s a nascent message: There are more people in HTML5-compatible environments today than in Flash-compatible environments, yet 84 percent of rich media ads are still built in Flash, she noted.

Chappell offers four best practices for building cross-screen ads to include mobile media buys, starting, first and foremost, with building in HTML5.

“Building mobile-compatible ads in HTML5 is getting much easier, as new tools come onto the scene to help expedite the transition from Flash,” she said. “With our HTML5 and in-app layouts, advertisers can upload their existing creative assets and create multiple formats in minutes. For more custom HTML5 units, Google Web Designer provides a robust and intuitive suite of design and animation tools to allow for more creative flexibility.”

Also, given that 80 percent of the time that people spend on their smartphones is spent within a mobile application, ad builds need to be considered accordingly. “Mobile Web is very different from a mobile app, so what works on a website experience doesn’t necessarily work in a mobile application,” Chappell noted. “Make sure to build ad creative that is designed for the app experience.”

Also, advertisers need to take into account a specific device’s capabilities into the ad creative.

For example Burberry took advantage of device form-factor in their Burberry Kisses campaign, which captured the shape of someone’s lips, digitized it and put it onto a digital letter that could be emailed to a loved one.

“On desktop, they could use the video camera on the computer to capture a person’s lips,” Chappell said. “But smartphones and tablets don’t have a front-facing video camera that would work. Instead, the developers used the touchscreen capabilities of these devices to allow people to kiss their screen. The device was able to understand the size and shape of the person’s lips via the touchscreen and digitize the image. This provided the same overarching brand experience for the user, but utilized a different way of executing it on different devices.”

And finally, geo-location should be a critical part of mobile ad builds.

“By building HTML5 ads that work for apps, use device form factor, and provide geographically-relevant info, advertisers can ensure their ads reach consumers successfully on every device and environment,” Chappell said.